Duality of Life
Excerpt from Universal Perspective, Alfred J. Parker
This planet was made for habitation; it is an integral part of time, which represents mathematical gradations that measure the unfoldment of life or the divine powers of being as they manifest the greater and lesser seasons of time. We, as individuals living such a short time upon this earth, see and understand clearly only the lesser seasons such as spring, summer, autumn, and winter, because they recur so often in our short lives. In the greater, divine plane of life, these seasons rotate just the same, only in periods representing many thousands of years. We see this in the great ages of history, verified through the findings of great prehistoric monsters, of buried implements, and miscellaneous articles from prehistoric races. For instance, I know of an individual who discovered a completely opalized clam shell buried underground in the mountains. I have personally seen whole clam beds bulldozed out of the side of a mountain around the six thousand foot level. Would this not prove that the particular mountain at six thousand feet was under the ocean at time, to spawn clam beds?"
The basis of life is duality; for instance, in the universal picture representing eternity we see what is termed in Christian theology as God, the father representing the male or positive part of being, the reason and seed or creative power of life. And, as all seeds must have the earth in which to propagate, so, as the opposite to God—the male or abstract part of life—we see the physical universe, of which earth is a part. The earth represents the negative, or female, manifestation of life and is the direct opposite of the male, or the father. The male is the seed, and the female is the principle of fertility or the earth in which God becomes involved to become clothed in flesh; the flesh is the earth and termed in philosophy as Mary, the mother, representing the finite or material plane of being.
Life must be made up of opposites to become a complete whole. It takes the earth and a seed to produce a plant that through its individual phases of growth encompasses all the seasons of nature from spring to winter, the two opposites in nature from spring to winter, the two opposites in nature. Spring represents all forms of life coming into a new cycle or season or growth, shown particularly through plant life. Spring is the awakening of natural forces that have been dormant throughout the winter. Winter is the time when nature lies fallow, or sleeping, and absorbs the elements of the earth, building up the powers that were used by the soil to promote growth for spring and summer.
Thus as spring heralds the awakening of nature we see the law of evolution working, the coming into a new life or season, whilst the late fall sees the ripe seed pods dropping onto the ground to become buried by the falling leaves and involved in the earth during the winter; this symbolizes the involutionary period. There must be involution to create evolution. There must be a winter and a spring. There must be a God-father, as well as a Mary-mother (earth); this we call the duality of life, or the completeness of being.
There must be a male and female to create life in all species except some bivalve species—and even they are male and female complete within themselves. So we must have the two opposites to prove existence itself, as for example in life, we have the abstract plane, termed God, and his counterpart, Mary-mother (the earth); also summer and winter, both in the lesser, or yearly, seasons. There is north and south, giving us the axis upon which the earth revolves; then we have day and night (positive and negative phases of life), white and black, hot and cold, sun and moon (positive and negative), up and down, air and earth; in human characteristics: happiness and sorrow, laughing and crying, love and hate, health and sickness, honesty and dishonesty, humbleness and ego, good and evil, wisdom and ignorance, knowledge and blind faith, and many others too numerous to mention. Thus we see that life is based upon the two opposites between which humankind must maintain the balance.
The duality of being refers to the higher, the unknowable, the intelligent aspect of the Principle of Life, and the lower, representing the intelligence in definable form.